Income Tax department identifies 21.75 lakh potential defaulters

The Income Tax Department has identified 21.75 lakh PAN card holders who could be potential non-filers of income tax. IT assessing officers will identify potential defaulters from this list and pursue them.

“While the government urges all tax payers to disclose their true income and pay appropriate taxes, the Tax Department would continue to pursue the non-filers vigorously till all high potential non-filers are covered,” said an official statement issued here on Friday.

This is the second batch of potential non-filers that the IT department is pursing. In the first batch of the intelligence drive, launched in February 2013 for identifying PAN holders who have not filed income tax returns, the department collected Rs.10,17.87 crore as self assessment tax and Rs. 8,98.22 crore as advance tax. It also received more than 5.3 lakh returns.

Data from banks

To identify non-filers, the department culls details from its databases on high value real estate transactions, investments and other purchases, where PAN card numbers are quoted.

The data is sourced from banks and other agencies using the Annual Information Returns, Central Information Branch data and Tax Deducted at Source and Tax Collected at Source returns. In the first batch it identified 12.19 lakh PAN card holders who were potential non-tax filers. The IT department has sent letters to 50,000 of them.

The potential defaulters can electronically submit their responses to the taxman on the department’s e-filing portal, the statement said. It said information would be provided only to specific PAN holders when they log onto https://incometaxindia efiling.gov.in.